Over 1 million BTC are now held in custody by Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) designed to track the asset’s price performance.
More than 30 Bitcoin ETFs collectively owned 1,002,343 BTC as of May 24, according to a chart posted to Twitter on Monday by MicroStrategy executive chairman Michael Saylor. The data was verified by Decrypt based on public reports and corroborated by Coinglass’s Bitcoin ETF dashboard.
The holdings represent about 5% of the circulating BTC supply worldwide and are currently worth $70.5 billion in total. They are also nearly five times the size of Saylor’s own Bitcoin stash, which currently weighs 214,400 BTC ($15 billion).
Most of that Bitcoin is held within U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs that went live in January, which shattered all previous ETF launch performance records. Over half are split evenly between the world’s largest funds: the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (289,040 BTC) and BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (287,168 BTC).
The next largest funds include American runners-up Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust (161,538 BTC), the Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (48,444 BTC), and the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (36,185 BTC). Internationally, the largest Bitcoin ETF remains Canada’s Purpose Bitcoin ETF—the world’s first to launch—holding 27,110 BTC.
Bitcoin ETFs allow investors to gain Bitcoin exposure through a familiar ETF wrapper, including the asset among other securities within a retirement or other tax-advantaged account. They’re also a vehicle for large institutions to gain exposure where they may otherwise be barred from purchasing coins directly from a crypto exchange.
First-quarter reporting figures showed that over 20% of exposure to US spot Bitcoin ETFs was held by large investors and institutions with over $100 million in total assets. That includes large hedge funds, banks, and even the state of Wisconsin’s pension fund.
“I think long term these could be between one and five percent of the US ETF market, which is a $7 trillion market,” said Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan in an interview earlier this month. “I think this is a multi-hundred billion dollar addressable market in the US alone.”
